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Information ethics, as is well known, has emerged as an independent area of ethical and philosophical inquiry. There are a number of academic journals that are devoted entirely to the numerous ethical issues that arise in connection with the new information communication technologies; these issues include a host of intellectual property, information privacy, and security issues of concern to librarians and other information professionals. In addition, there are a number of major international conferences devoted to information ethics every year. It would hardly be overstating the matter to say that information ethics is as “hot” an area of theoretical inquiry as medical ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on these and related issues.

The paper presents a review of relevant information ethics literature together with the author's assessment of the arguments.

There are issues that are more abstract and basic than the substantive issues with which most information ethics theorizing is concerned. These issues are thought to be “foundational” in the sense that we cannot fully succeed in giving an analysis of the concrete problems of information ethics (e.g. are legal intellectual property rights justifiably protected?) until these issues are adequately addressed.

The paper offers a needed survey of foundational issues in information ethics.

I consider the foundational issue of whether we have a right to information that is fundamental in being independent of other rights and general in protecting all information. To this end, I distinguish two kinds of morally relevant value an entity might have, i.e. intrinsic and instrumental value, and explain the role that each has in determining whether a person has a fundamental moral interest in that entity. Next, I argue that, by itself, the claim that some entity E has an informative nature does not justify believing that E has either intrinsic value or instrumental value. Accordingly, I conclude that whatever protection morality provides to our interests in information, such protection does not rise to the level of a right that is either general in the sense that it applies to all information or fundamental in the sense that it is not derived from other more basic rights.

While the problem of unethical leadership is undoubtedly a global one, the urgency of generating ethical leadership to advance the development of Africa has never been more evident than it is today. The challenge for higher education in developing ethical leaders is of core importance, as it is responsible for providing the main recruiting ground of business leaders. The current paper reports findings of a qualitative study of postgraduate students’ ethical development at the end of courses in business ethics aimed to enhance moral reasoning and ethical decision-making. The paper aims to ascertain whether stand-alone ethics courses are more effective than integrated ones in achieving academic ethical competency.

The study adopts an idiographic approach which aims at eliciting individual student subjective perceptions of the effects of the direct and indirect courses of ethical instruction on their moral reasoning and ethical practice. The research design broadly follows Mill’s (2017) method of difference.

Findings indicate perceived differences in the relative effectiveness of stand-alone and embedded ethics courses among students but also show that most students hold positive overall evaluations of the effectiveness of the both types of ethics instruction.

Limitations to the study include that it is cross-sectional, involves a small sample of postgraduate students and is restricted to two management courses at one institution of higher learning. Furthermore, while Mill (2017) provides a useful research design in this context, it is not able to indicate causality, as there are other possible unidentified “third variables” that may be the actual cause of student differences between embedded and stand-alone ethics courses. The study is not able to show the durability and transfer of ethical competencies into students’ later working lives.

The study provides a useful practical educational contribution to the extant knowledge in the field in that it suggests that ethical courses aimed at giving students a moral reasoning “toolkit” for ethical decision-making are more effective when delivered in the stand-alone format, whereas practical decision-making skills are best honed by embedded business ethics courses.

The problem of corruption in business and politics in South Africa is widely documented and has been regarded as responsible for creating a serious developmental drag on the alleviation of poverty and quality of lives of the majority of people in the country. The moral/ethical competency and behavior of future business leaders is partly the responsibility of institutions of higher learning. The study aims to find the most effective means of imparting moral awareness in postgraduate students who are likely to take up business leadership positions in their future careers.

The study provides useful contribution to the extant knowledge in the field in the African context in that it suggests that ethical courses aimed at giving students a moral reasoning “toolkit” for ethical decision-making are more effective when delivered in the stand-alone format, whereas practical decision-making skills are best honed by embedded business ethics courses.

In practice, monetary valuation of biotic resources by the concept of total economic value (TEV) is a powerful tool for a rational treatment of this fraction of natural capital and for its conservation. Beyond methodological limits to monetarisation with regard to its marginal character there are also moral limits. Adopting the weakest and least controversial assumptions regarding both mankind’s dependence on biodiversity and environmental ethics, one is led to the conclusion that the impossibility of communicating with future generations forbids us to value biodiversity only in monetary terms. Fairness towards futurity demands that we consider conservation as a constraint on economic activity.

The purpose of this paper is to bring the concept of “meeting the gaze of the other” into conversation with the organizational accountability literature. This is done by integrating “the gaze” phenomenon with Darwall’s (2006) distinction between de jure and de facto authority. In the context of accountability, only de jure accountability entails meeting the gaze of the stakeholder, in that it requires organizations to grant stakeholders the moral authority to hold them to account. Drawing on this work, this paper aims to critically examine the distinction between de jure and de facto in current organizational accountability theorizing and in practice.

A content analysis of the “letters to the stakeholders” from the Global 100 firms’ accountability/social responsibility reports. Specifically, this paper examines the frequency with which leading companies acknowledge de facto vs de jure accountability, the nature of these statements and toward which stakeholder group they are directed.

Most firms acknowledge de facto accountability, but few grant de jure standing, making it more likely that firms will ignore claimants they prefer not to morally engage. De jure relationships that are acknowledged tend to be restricted to certain stakeholders such as employees, customers and shareholders. In addition, there are differences in the granting of de jure accountability across industry sectors.

This work highlights the importance of acknowledging de jure accountability when engaging with stakeholders, and importantly, it highlights how to integrate consideration for de jure accountability into theorizing on organizational accountability. This analysis suggests that acknowledging de jure accountability vis-a-vis stakeholders can lead to more positive ethical decision-making and stronger relationships. Organizations are encouraged to strengthen their ethical decision-making by granting moral standing to their stakeholders.

Organizational accountability is typically treated as a single construct, yet de jure accountability (vs simply de facto accountability) has been linked to particularly powerful moral effects. This paper examines the critical distinction between de facto and de jure accountability. It makes a compelling case for the importance of acknowledging the gaze of organizational stakeholders.

Theories of management require normative justification; that is, they rely on some conception of what is morally good, right, and just. This chapter examines some of the normative reasons for adopting a stakeholder theory of management and for rejecting the once, and perhaps still, “dominant” shareholder-centric approach. This chapter then surveys some of the prominent “normative cores” that are used to ground stakeholder theory, that is, Kantian, contractarian, feminist ethics, and ethical pragmatism, and the moral obligations that each normative approach generates. Some pressing questions are raised with respect to each normative approach. To what extent ought we to recognize imperfect obligations to shareholders? Are contractarian hypernorms morally substantive? How exactly should we care about stakeholders, and is care even an appropriate attitudinal response? Without some commitment to objective ethical standards, how can pragmatists resolve stakeholder conflict?

An enriched theoretical model of regulatory compliance is developed in this paper. The body of empirical evidence demonstrates that the pure deterrence model of regulatory compliance, which focuses primarily on the certainty and severity of sanctions as key determinants of compliance, provides only a partial explanation of compliance behavior. To offer a more complete explanation, the model developed herein integrates economic theory with theories from psychology and sociology to account for both tangible and intangible motivations influencing individuals’ decisions whether to comply with a given set of regulations. Specifically, the model accounts for moral obligation and social influence in addition to the conventional costs and revenues associated with illegal behavior. While cast in a natural resource management context, the theory developed here is applicable to a variety of institutional conditions. The resulting framework enables the design and implementation of more efficient compliance and regulatory programs than was heretofore possible.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of vicarious moral cleansing and scrutinize whether unethical behavior of leaders initiate moral cleansing in subordinates or not. This study also highlights a boundary condition under which employees are motivated to cleanse their moral self-image through increased organizational citizenship behaviors and decreased counterproductive work behaviors.

The study is quantitative based on hypothesis testing. By adopting convenience sampling technique, employees working at all managerial levels of service sector organizations were asked to fill out the questionnaires. Being a time-lagged study, data for independent variable (unethical leadership) and moderator (relational self-construal) were collected at T1, data for mediator (moral self-image) were collected at T2 and data for outcomes (OCBs, CWBs) were collected at T3 from same respondents. To rule out the possibility of common method bias and social desirability bias, a multi-wave design was adopted and respondents were asked to provide unique keys/IDs instead of their names.

This study investigated the impact that unethical leaders impose on employee self-concept. Moreover, this study also explored the motivational tendencies of moral self-image. Findings suggest that employees' desirable or undesirable behaviors against leader are dependent upon the perceptions related with their own role, self-image and perception of leader's integrity and intentions. Leader's unethicality is perceived threatening for their own moral self-image and they deal with it constructively. This study has laid the foundation for presence of vicarious moral cleansing in organizational setup, and it is advised that researchers must investigate this phenomenon in different settings to provide useful insights.

Due to lack of resources, employing a pure longitudinal research design was not feasible, and therefore a time-lagged research design was used to gather data from only two cities of Pakistan. However, authors believe that a longitudinal research design, with data collection from a larger sample, will provide more fine-grained results. Secondly, use of perceived leader's integrity scale to measure unethical leadership is another limitation. Although the authors tried to address this issue by conducting an EFA and adopting only suitable items, yet a new scale which is able to measure the true essence of unethical leadership ought to be developed.

Use of moral self-image as an indicator of moral cleansing is an additional contribution of this study, as previous studies used levels of guilt as driving force behind moral cleansing and compensatory cleansing. Most of the studies on unethical leadership as well as moral cleansing took place in the Western context and scholars' stress that culture can substantially influence outcomes of these constructs. Thus, this study extends the literature on moral cleansing and moral self-regulation by developing and testing a model in cultural settings of Pakistan.

本研究擬探討間接感受到的道德清洗 (以下簡稱間接道德清洗) 這個概念；研究亦會仔細審視領袖的不道德行為會否在其下屬間引起道德清洗。就此而言，本研究亦強調了一個邊界條件，在這邊界條件之下，僱員透過組織公民行為的增加，以及為工作目標帶來負面影響的工作行為的減少得到激勵，進而淨化他們的道德自我形象。

本研究為一個基於假設檢定的量性研究；研究採用任意抽樣方法而進行。在服務業機構內不同管理階層工作的僱員被邀回答問卷；由於這是一個時滯研究，即使是同一的答覆者，IV (不道德的領導) 和仲裁人(關係型自我建構)的數據在T1收集，調解員 (道德自我形象) 的數據在T2收集，結果 (OCBs，CWBs) 的數據在T3收集，為了排除共同方法偏差和社會期許誤差的出現，研究採用多波浪設計，而且，答覆者必須提供獨一無二的密鑰或身份證明，而不是提供他們的名字。

本研究探討了不道德的領袖對僱員自我概念的影響；研究亦探索了可能推動道德自我形象的因素。研究結果暗示、僱員會做對領袖而言可取的行為與否，全視乎他們如何看待自己的角色和自我形象，也視乎他們對領袖的誠信和動機有甚麼看法。領袖若不道德，這會被認為會對僱員的道德自我形象做成威脅，在這情況下，僱員會積極地應付這個威脅。本研究為在組織架構內存有間接道德清洗這個觀點打下基礎。今後的研究學者或許應就不同的環境、對這個現象進行探討和研究，以使我們能更深刻地瞭解這個課題。

從前的研究均採用內疚的程度、作為道德清洗和補償清洗背後的推動力 (Liao et al., 2018) 。本研究另外的貢獻在於採用了道德自我形象、作為道德清洗的指標。以前關於不道德領導以及道德清洗的研究，大多以西方國家為背景。研究學者均強調文化因素會很大程度地影響這些觀念帶來的結果；因此，本研究透過設計一個以巴基斯坦文化為背景的模型、並對其進行測試、來擴展有關道德清洗及道德自我調節的文獻。

This paper aims to explore human technology relations through the lens of sci-fi movies within the life cycle of the ETHICOMP conference series. Here, different perspectives on artificial intelligent agents, primarily in the shape of robots, but also including other kinds of intelligent systems, are explored. Hence, IT-ethical issues related to humans interactions with social robots and artificial intelligent agents are illustrated with reference to: Alex Proyas’ I, Robot; James Cameron’s Terminator; and the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix. All three movies present robots cast in the roles of moral agents capable of doing good or evil. Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence, A.I. gives rise to a discussion of the robot seen as a moral patient and furthermore reflects on possibilities for care and trust relations between robots and humans. Andrew Stanton’s Wall-E shapes a discussion of robots as altruistic machines in the role as facilitators of a flourishing society. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report allows for a discussion of knowledge-discovering technology and the possibility for balancing data utility and data privacy.

Observations of themes in sci-fi movies within the life span of the ETHICOMP conference series are discussed with the purpose of illustrating ways in which science fiction reflects (science) faction. In that sense, science fiction does not express our worries for a distant future, but rather casts light over questions, which is of concern in the present time.

Human technology interactions are addressed and it is shown how sci-fi films highlight philosophical questions that puzzle us today, such as which kind of relationships can and ought to be formed with robots, and whether the roles they play as social actors demand that one ought to assign moral standing to them. The paper does not present firm answers but instead pays attention to the selection and framing of questions that deserve attention.

To relate sci-fi movies to topics raised during the past 20 years of the ETHICOMP conference series, seemed to be an appropriate way of celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the ETHICOMP conference series.